Choldenko, Gennifer. Al Capone Does My Shirts

In 1935, 12-year-old "Moose" Flanagan moves to Alcatraz, where his father takes a job as guard and electrician so that his 15-year-old autistic sister Natalie can go to a boarding school in San Francisco. He has to adjust to living on an island with a handful of other children and a bunch of dangerous convicts, and learn to navigate his awkward but touching relationship with his sister.

It's not what you do wrong, but what you do right, that matters--I think this book's a good example of that. It does a lot wrong, and a lot right, and I end up charmed by it even while acknowledging it as quite flawed.

A lot of the plot elements don't quite seem to cohere; the ending is likeable, but also rushed and extremely improbable. The snappy and fast-paced first-person narrative is very weak when it comes to grounding details; I have to constantly remind myself of basic elements of the plot, that it's set in 1935 and Natalie is fifteen, because the book doesn't inhabit its own reality very comfortably. The characters and the dialogue make me think that it's the sixties or seventies, if not later. Grounding detail is hard--a lot of writers make it to bestseller status without getting very good at it--but while that's fine in a novel set in the last 20 years, it feels rather awkward in an ostensibly historical novel.

What's right, though, is the portrayal of Moose and his family; it is knowing and tender and good. And that's enough to make me happy with this book, even though it could have been better.